Mr. Zhang Daqian is not only an internationally renowned master of Chinese painting, but also a top gourmet. He once said rather conceitedly: "In terms of art, I am good at cooking, and I am more than artistic." ”
Diet is not only necessary for maintaining life, but also a condensation of culture, knowledge, customs and so on. Zhang Daqian has loved food all his life and is good at cooking. Since his 1950 exhibition in New Delhi, India, he has traveled all over the world and traveled to foreign countries, but no matter where he is, a Chinese robe and a table of Chinese dishes have always accompanied him with a Chinese heart.
Zhang Daqian personally took charge of the spoon
Nostalgia is the intercourse between lips and teeth
Among Zhang Daqian's gastronomic complex, there are factors that pay attention to oral happiness and love life. But from a deeper point of view, it is Zhang Daqian's cuisine that contains sincere feelings of home and country and national consciousness, and exudes a strong humanistic atmosphere and nostalgia. It can be said that food is not only the materialized label on the tip of Zhang Daqian's external tongue, but also the nostalgic chicken soup on his inner soul.
I first had this idea a few years ago in Seventeen Mile Bay in the United States. Seventeen Mile Bay, located in the small town of Carmel, California. Here the mountains and seas are close together, the islands are beautiful, the sails reflect the sun, and the gulls and birds chase the waves. When I went, it had become a popular punch card, and travelers of different skin colors gathered here. But in the 1960s, it was a quiet and remote place, a small town hidden in a pine forest. It is precisely in order to enjoy this kind of tranquility away from the world, many American writers and artists have lived here. Zhang Daqian came to this time in 1968, purchased a small and simple second-hand villa, and low-key titled "can live" as the name of the painting. At this time, Zhang Daqian was already seventy years old, and in the twilight years of his life, he returned to loneliness and returned to his true nature. On the other side of the ocean where "the knot is in the human realm, and there is no noise of cars and horses", he began the great change of "splashing color and splashing ink" in his twilight years, presenting a new painting style of "splashing color and applying color and ink blending".
At that time, Seventeen Mile Bay was located in a remote corner of California, far from the urban cultural and artistic center, and the gallery that represented his works was not selling well, and Zhang Daqian's economic pressure was very high. To this end, even dong yuan's "Creek Bank Map", which he used as a personal collection, was sold to his friend Wang Jiqian. Coupled with a variety of diseases, the elderly Zhang Daqian is homesick and nostalgic, often waking up in the dream of "not knowing what year this night is", and then crying loudly in the "homeland can not look back at the moon", pillowing the sound of the waves of Seventeen Mile Bay to wash his face with tears.
Not far from the "can live", there is an island that stretches out to the sea, and there is a strong and old lone pine on it, which is now the iconic scenery of Seventeen Mile Bay. At that time, Zhang Daqian often stood with his staff on the pine for a long time when the sun was rising or the sun was setting in the west, looking at Shenzhou from afar. Yes, "Travel all over Europe, southwest and North America, and look at the mountains and look at the old mountains." To this end, he wrote affectionately in a poem: "Ten years of desolation will be hard, so the mountain is still long." Thousands of miles of hometown frequently dream, hanging the sail is the day of return. ”
It is precisely in this realistic situation of life, psychology, spirituality and other aspects that Zhang Daqian reverently makes every meal purely Chinese, viewing it as a homesickness tour and a homesickness consolation. Just so-called, only on the tip of the tongue, but under the heart. Every time the chef drove from Seventeen Mile Bay to the city's Chinatown to buy food, Zhang Daqian not only personally wrote down the food list, but also repeatedly instructed him to go to the old shop to buy food from China, so as not to taste different, so as to practice his "four seas for home to seek 'true' taste." ”
Vegetable chart
On that day, I wandered in front of the garden where I could live, and I didn't want to leave for a long time. I came to Seventeen Mile Bay from the banks of the Huangpu River in order to appreciate the sea of stars and the breath marks left by a master artist, and also to complete the instructions of an old gentleman.
In the early 1990s, when I was conducting research on Haipai calligraphers and painters, Mr. Xie Zhiliu said to me: "Zhang Daqian's most important twilight method is seventeen mile bay in California, but in Zhang Daqian's research and biography, most of them are not mentioned, and some are only mentioned in a stroke. You should go there and have a look and investigate. "And for the first time, he showed me the picture of Zhang Daqian, who was widely circulated later, holding a cane by the bay. As the sun sets, the sunset smears a layer of rose red like a paste for "Can Live", overflowing with a warm sense of vicissitudes, as if waiting for the return of the deceased.
At this time, Ah Cheng, a local Chinese who accompanied me to investigate, showed me a menu of Zhang Daqian's family banquet that he had collected in his mobile phone WeChat on April 15, 1971, to entertain the villagers who came from Washington to visit "Can Live".
On April 15, 1971, the 60th year of Xinhai (1971), brother Shuren came from Huafu Hall to live, ordered his family to administer a feast of the Ancient Huan character, and invited Brother Zhengyan, the couple of The Gan Shun people, the Tianxun family, and the mother of the family to accompany him:
Dried shark fin soup, steamed duck with fragrant lees, roasted black ginseng with green onion, Chengdu lion's head, asparagus with chicken fat, chicken melt milk cake, tea leg evening pineapple, bean paste rice, watermelon cup.
This table family banquet, mainly Sichuan cuisine, combined with some of the methods of Haipai cuisine, is a fairly pure, authentic Chinese dish.
Handwritten recipes
Zhang Daqian regards the holding of this food party as a carnival of his nostalgia, a demonstration of nostalgia, and a small salon of nostalgia. To this end, he not only wrote the menu in a handsome and energetic way, but also solemnly invited other relatives and friends to participate. Let the dishes under the chopsticks, the delicacies on the tip of the tongue, and the enjoyment in the taste buds become nostalgia. Only in this way, nostalgia is the mutual retention between lips and teeth, the encounter in the sense of taste. Therefore, although he went to China for many days and lived overseas, Zhang Daqian still had a pious taste for food in his homeland. It is in this seventeen-mile bay "can live", in the moment of seeing this Zhang family banquet menu, I suddenly interpreted the true connotation of Zhang Daqian's food complex and the spiritual direction of menu writing.
The breakfast was also pure national
At the end of 1971, due to the disrepair of "Can Live" and its too narrow, Zhang Daqian purchased a small piece of land in a forest not far away, and built a fairly simple orange-red flat house with only one floor, named "Huanzhuo". The same sound of 荜 and bi also contains the meaning of "the blue wisps of the road to open up the mountains and forests" in the artistic transformation.
The kitchen of "Huanxunyi" is larger than that of "Can Live", the equipment is also complete, and there is still a barbecue in the courtyard. When the new home was completed, Zhang Daqian personally cooked a table of authentic "Daqian Cuisine" to entertain his close friends in Seventeen Mile Bay, such as the painter Hou Beiren, Carmel Gallery Zheng Yuebo and others.
Zhang Daqian's cooking skills can be said to have been honed, and by the end of his life, he was already pure fire. As early as the 1940s, Zhang Daqian was known as "the first gourmet in the painting world of the Republic of China" and engraved with the chapter of "Dafengtang Mountain Kitchen". Xu Beihong said that Zhang Daqian "can adjust the taste of Shu, talk happily, and often go into the kitchen for a good meal." Xie Zhiliu also commented after tasting Zhang Daqian's cooking skills: "The 'sour and spicy fish soup' made is fragrant and delicious, making people smell salivating and unforgettable. Therefore, during the banquet, when Hou Beiren even praised Zhang Daqian's cooking skills, Zhang Daqian said with deep feeling: "If a person does not even know how to appreciate food, where can he learn art well?" ”
Thanks to Chinese cuisine, it not only provides the nourishment for survival, spiritual support and satisfaction of oral happiness for Zhang Daqian, who changes the law in his twilight years and lives in the bay, but more importantly, it brings together the comprehensive energy of realm and emotion, cultivation and belief, which is the master's pursuit that cannot be hidden by the years.
In May 1973, it was the most beautiful time of the year in Seventeen Mile Bay. Zhang Daqian painted a self-portrait of "Begging for Food in the World" to celebrate his 75th birthday. Zhang Daqian has always self-deprecated his painting career as "begging for food". This reminds me of Tao Yuanming's poem "Begging for Food": "Hunger comes to drive me, I don't know why." Walk to Sri, knock on the door and make a clumsy remark. Later, Su Dongpo, who understood the meaning of Tao poetry, wrote in the poem "He Tao Begging Food": "Lu Gong also begged for rice, and he did not quit cooking." Yuanmingduan begged for food, and did not shy away from coming. And Chen Hongshou, who was trapped in the Qingteng Bookstore, also painted "Beggar Figure". These literati and celebrities with wind and bones could beg for food in their own hands, but also to maintain the innocence of personality, spiritual independence and freedom of life. It is also this spiritual legacy of Chinese scholars and doctors that makes Zhang Daqian, who has lived overseas for decades, always wear a Hanfu when traveling, and his diet is always a Chinese dish. According to his personal secretary Feng Youheng, Mr. Daqian's breakfast was also pure national, including fritters, small steamed buns, steamed dumplings (both meat and vegetarian), snow vegetable ham noodles, scallion oil cakes, roasted selling, peeled egg porridge, radish silk cakes and so on.
Pursue cooking as an art
In 1977, Zhang Daqian's splashing ink method had won him an international reputation. He bid farewell to Seventeen Mile Bay, where he had lived together for ten years, and returned to taiwan, the treasure island of his motherland. On the beautiful side of Sungai Creek, the "Maya House" was built. To this end, he gladly inscribed a poem on the "Lotus Flower Map" sent to an old friend on the mainland: "The sideburns of the cape have been frosted, and the vicissitudes are written with tears." The five continents travel all over the country to find victory, and the thousands of miles return to the hometown. ”
In terms of gastronomic cooking, it is even more like a fish in the water. The ingredients are not only fresh, but also readily available, unlike looking abroad. As a result, Zhang Daqian often held family banquets in the "Maya Jingshe", and those delicacies became the most human taste on the tip of the tongues of "foodies" and "gourmets". Zhang Daqian still maintains that kind of pious and serious eating attitude, and often writes a book to make food orders. These menus were later auctioned at Christie's for nearly one million dollars, which can be described as the most expensive food list in the world and a legend of Chinese cuisine.
"Tofu is cooked well, far better than bird's nest; if sea vegetables are not cooked well, they are not as good as bamboo shoots." This is what Yuan Ming said in his "Suiyuan Food List", and he is also known as "Gentleman Yuanyu Chef", a gourmet, but he can't cook. Zhang Daqian, who believes that "food is a matter of elegance", is a double-ingredient foodie who moves his mouth and hands. Since he regards food as the carrier of nostalgia and the compensation of nostalgia, then he also cooks with the spirit of art. It can be described as Danqing and cooking.
《A Thousand Flavors of Cuisine》
Zhang Daqian cooking, white case pays attention to knife skills, red case pays attention to fire, dishes pay attention to shape, and food materials are selected. Generally do not put MSG, pay attention to the original taste of the food, that is, "the original taste of the truth". To this end, although Zhang Daqian's family banquet does not have any mountain treasures and seafood, dragon liver and phoenix bile, it is only a home-cooked dish, but due to the exquisite cooking, everyone experiences the delicacies of the world between the lips and teeth. According to Zhang Daqian's family chef Xu Minqi, when Zhang Daqian was interested in his later years, he would personally cook and cook, and after making a good dish, he would invite Xu Minqi to taste it together and discuss with each other.
Zhang Daqian has a gastronomic monograph "Daqian Residents Learn to Cook", which he wrote in 1962 when he lived in Guo Youshou's home in Paris, recording three meals and banquet menus, such as a food diary, to comfort homesickness. He used xingcao to record the cooking of his favorite seventeen dishes, such as Sichuan lion's head, tamales, hui pot meat, braised pork, lollipo chicken, Shaoxing chicken, shuipu beef, magnolia slices, Gongbao squid, etc., this typical hometown dish, diffuses a strong sense of nostalgia. In the same year, Zhang Daqian borrowed the home of a Chinese friend in Belgium and gave the recipe to a friend.
Zhang Daqian pursues cooking as an art, and in his eyes, a real chef is an artist just like a painter. And his love of food is naturally also passed on to his artistic creation, he has painted a lot of cabbage, radish, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, vegetables and fruits, which is undoubtedly related to his preference for ingredients. In a painting of turnip cabbage, Zhang Daqian wrote a poem about Shi Tao's Seven Perfections: "A cold career is a Confucian, and the family is poor and anorexic and has no fish." The root of the vegetable is boiled in modo oil, and the lamp is left behind. Someone commented, "The crisp cabbage and tender mushrooms in this place have become the yearning of hanshi." And every time I saw a picture of cabbage painted by Zhang Daqian, I wanted to take it off and eat it, because his painting was too impressive. ”
Text/Wang Qisen
Source/Shangguan News
The content comes from Shangguan News